According to a study conducted by the US Army in 1967, approximately half of the world's landmass or terrain is inaccessible to wheeled or tracked vehicles. However, legged animals and people generally have no issues accessing these areas. Accordingly, walking machines have been developed for accessing such terrain.
Many previous walking machines possess the same system level hydraulic architecture. These machines use a prime mover (usually an internal combustion engine) to drive a hydraulic pump that is fed from a reservoir of hydraulic fluid, which is then pumped to a series of control valves that control hydraulic cylinders. The fluid is then returned to the reservoir and the cycle starts again. These statically stable walking machines generally suffer from a number of short-comings: low payload vs. vehicle mass ratio, high power consumption when under low load, and general reliability and maintenance issues that arise due to having closely packaged hydraulic circuits. The present invention provides a different systems level approach to address these shortcomings. Furthermore, walking machines with traditional hydraulic systems need constant system pressure to maintain position, which consumes a significant amount of power.